


When Ships Meet In The Night

by Flatfootmonster



Series: FFM's CMBYN Therapy [2]
Category: Call Me By Your Name (2017), Call Me by Your Name - André Aciman
Genre: Angst, Elio POV, God damn it I will have my happy ending, M/M, Reconciliation, Reunions, Sexual Tension, Tension, Understanding, Working Out My Feelings Through Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-25
Updated: 2018-01-25
Packaged: 2019-03-09 12:19:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,968
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13481352
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flatfootmonster/pseuds/Flatfootmonster
Summary: I open my mouth but the words come to an abrupt halt as a generous and cold raindrop lands on my forehead. I tip my chin up to the sky and I'm blessed with more droplets kissing my flesh.The rain held off until I stood right here with him. The tension snapped and the heavens themselves are crying in relief; the world was holding its breath too.Within a heart beat the gentle kisses turn furious and water streaks down my chest in flood rivers. I run fingers through my slick hair as I drop my gaze to find Oliver, facing me and looking as soaked as I am.





	When Ships Meet In The Night

**Author's Note:**

> This comes directly after [Cor Cordium](http://archiveofourown.org/works/13335540), a week into Oliver's stay. There are some issues that of course need addressing. 
> 
> I am in no way attempting to copy Mr Aciman's because it's impeccable. I approached this Elio POV in my own style, despite how intimidating that is. I do hope you enjoy... and I'm not done yet. I can't let these babies go... 
> 
> Enjoy!  
> Love, Becs

I'm not sure I can get used to the change within these walls. It was never solitary, how could it be with the neighbours and well wishers and dinner guests that I have inherited? There was always someone or something happening. But it all felt external. I could shut it out if I wished it, simply shut the door of my room and ignore it, knowing I would be left to my peace. Or if it came to it, I would pack a bag and travel for a week or a month or three. 

This…  _ this  _ is different. I can be in my most private refuge and still feel him here. I'm sure if I spun around three times with my eyes closed and stuck out my arm upon standing still, I would still manage to point out his exact location. I did—after one too many glasses of wine—do that very thing but I possessed not the courage nor conviction to test my hypothesis. 

The itch in the back of my skull is a constant. It keeps my nerves on edge in a way I have not encountered in two decades. Part of me is reluctant to embrace it, I welcomed it so easily back then, awaited too eagerly and was left so bereft for the lack of it. The lack of him. That space was never filled, I never found a replacement or a stand in that lasted long enough to fool myself over. It was just me and this place and that all too vacant hole. 

And now when I hear his footsteps I have to restrain myself from hiding. I want to hide lest I become comfortable with that presence again. He feels the edge to my nerves, he's soft around me and he does not push my boundaries and for that I am glad. More than glad. It's a lot to adjust to and I'm not sure if I will fully rearrange myself to this, whatever this is or is not. 

The clock in my room seems to ring louder with every motion of that second hand, enough so that I'm wondering why the noise isn't bringing my mother in to question the infernal racket. It's been getting louder at night, since last week. Since he decided to stay. I have no idea what the time is despite the timepiece’s insistent want for recognition, all I know is I went to bed some time ago and here I lay. It must have been hours, I heard the rest of the bodies through the building wind up their tasks and shut their own bedroom doors. All but one… 

That one door that has not closed all week and I’m starting to understand OCD because knowing it is cracked and the Oxford lamp is pooling a welcoming soft glow in the hallway is all but maddening. No, it  _ is _ maddening. This isn't the first time I've been tempted to throw my legs out of bed and storm down the hall to slam the door closed on its tempting invitation. 

I push at the linens that cover me, it's too warm for them and I feel like I'm suffocating on heat and quiet and stillness. Perhaps the humidity is why I'm finding sleep difficult, it hasn’t rained all week and I can feel the tension building—the strain is too great and I am anticipating the inevitable fracture. I scowl at the ceiling as though it’s at fault for my insomnia but no matter how hard I try to shift the blame I know it’s one single element:  _ Him.  _

Oh, since he has been here we have done normal things. We have walked and talked and laughed like normal people, but I shy away when he asks a leading question or makes a comment that begs clarification. My tongue is tired from fighting my brain all day, trying to answer in clarity or to sift through his words to find the meanings within. I yearn to show him everything so simply and clean, to disrobe the years and unfold them. But what if this is a figment of my imagination? No—worse still—what if it's real but the same hour I bare all, a cab rolls up the gravel drive and I hear the seemingly inevitable and eternally confounding  _ Later! _

When this was my imagination— _ my fantasies _ —I was ruler there. I could say if it ended and when and how. I chose my words and said them clearly with no doubt in the sky above my head that this was what I meant and it would be so. If this is real, I have no power other than to be honest and to follow my urges and twenty years haven’t changed those, not even by the smallest fraction. And I fear the way I will react to his truths, would I feel disappointment at what brought his feet to my door? Would it change the way he appears in my memories? I'm not sure if I will ever be ready to change the way I wish to see him. He’d come back as the dream remembered, and I'm desperately grasping at that.

He kissed me. On the grass and under the moon and my lips trembled as they were comforted. He kissed me and it was sealing a pact that I did not know the small print of. Questions keep forming in my throat like  _ So, when do you have to go back? _ Or  _ Hey, what's the plan? _ but they turn to empty breaths as I worry the answers. If I'm told  _ Oh I leave in a week _ —or two or three—it won't matter, the time glass would have been placed firmly on the table of affairs and I will be hard pressed to think about anything other than those white grains and estimate how many are still left before…  _ what  _ exactly? That I don't know. And if I'm told of a plan, what if it's caution or—worse still—friendly? What if the kiss was simply a symbol of some significance that I am ignorant of and we will continue being distant acquaintances? 

I can sit for hours and prove and disprove my assumptions but nothing brings me closer to knowing. The only thing I have left is to ask. To speak. 

I grab a pillow and pull it onto my face in a futile effort to stop that spiralling memory. Did I even speak back then or did he? Part of me wants him to be gone tomorrow to put a stop to this incessant fretting, my nerves feel strung out and scrubbed until gossamer thin. And I don't dare engage the larger portion of me that hopes. Those bubbles of optimism seem to double by the day after the nights of wishing him gone have passed only to be denied by his wide and bright grin when I stumble down for breakfast. The bubbles are quickly reaching the lip of the tub, they will overflow soon, and then what will I do to mop up the mess? 

I bet  _ he _ doesn't have problems sleeping. 

There's no adjoining balcony now, just a wide and wooden walkway in the shape of the hall. Any bravery that shuffles the bare soles of our feet across the tread worn passage will be proclaimed to the ever watching eyes of the ancient artwork and the omnipresent nature of this family alike. The procession is a daunting one, I've envisioned it every single night since he kissed me. Would it be him or I that embarks on the endeavour? It should be him by all rights.

Then again, he came here; flew and drove and walked. He made that first movement towards whatever shape he thinks this will form. I know he is waiting for me to define the boundaries whilst showing his are wide open with that three inch gap left undefended in the wilderness of night. I know what he is doing is the right thing,  _ I know _ , but it doesn't stop the want for him to push harder against my currently indecisive mass. 

It's getting too much now, each moment is another footstep and handhold up a mountain, the air thins and my strength melts under the light reflected from the pure white of the peaks. My eyes squint in that beautiful blaze, not sure if what I'm seeing is real or an afterimage from years past. And with every grip of rock my fingers struggle to find and cling to, the fear of the drop makes every heartbeat jolt pain into my blood, shooting a long learned lesson through my body with a fevered urgency—that I'm much too high, that this is much too dangerous, that I can't do this…

I thought I was done with these dilemmas. I'm too old for this. My mother, on the other hand, seems to disagree. Oliver's arrival brought through a fresh and nourishing breeze, it has rearranged the dust and brings life remembered back to her. Her quick and knowing smiles seem to follow us both, entertained—I'm sure—by a game brought down from the shelves and played anew, except no one can quite remember the rules so we are making it up as we go along and she is keeping score. I want to ask her who is winning when I hear childlike giggles that are barely contained by an elegant hand. I already know she will shake her head with faux ignorance whilst she thumbs through a book with idle speed and flicks her cigarette ash into the tray that is her loyal companion. I also know that if I open my mouth, petulance of youth will flow too freely and those small snickers will turn into a gale between being told to pull up socks that I don't wear and do something  _ useful  _ with my time.  _ Like what, Mother? _ I would ask and I can see her thin eyebrow rise—a provocative notion that needs no verbalisation—so clearly in my mind’s eye that it is almost as if the conversation had occurred. 

I'm sure  _ she  _ knows exactly what Oliver's plans are. They talk for hours on end, pouring over the old and the new with a familiarity that never ceased. I'm  _ also  _ sure that my mother has told him just as much about  _ my  _ own life. Those conversations transpire when I clam up and make an excuse about something  _ useful _ I forgot to do so as to avoid whatever inevitable designs my life will take through these questions and those words and this information. So really, who do I have to blame for that? I can barely justify the irritation I feel for these treaties that are met and debated without my presence. And I know it makes things worse because here I am, sweating the fine details when I don't even know the location of those fresh manuscripts. 

I move to turn, take my frustration out on the mattress or by thumping my foot against the wooden frame of the bed (I tell myself it is simply keeping time with the clock but I know it's a morse code of distress for one particular pair of ears to hear) when I freeze. Was that a floorboard creaking? And a whispered curse? Who is that? But I know already. Immediately my heart takes over from the loud ticking and all I can hear is the blood pounding in my ears as I try to focus my eyes on the door. My mind was spinning and churning with my boundless thoughts but the knock on the door stills the needle in the compass like Oliver himself is magnetic north. The only light in my bedroom is spilling in from the open window, the pale glow that is wafting under my door from Oliver's room is stronger now. 

“Who's that?” I grit my teeth at the fact I'm whispering, complicit in something that needs to be hushed. And I don't need to ask and he knows that too, no one else is going to be moving through the house at this time. Knuckles tap lightly twice on my door and I roll my eyes at the politeness of it all, despite my body tensing in apprehension. “Come.” I mutter. I'm shaking my head as the door inches open but I'm not quite sure who the current irritation is for: Oliver who seems to be attending to my angsty demands that he moves first, or myself for not swallowing my fear and taking the initiative. Either way my stomach begins to knot and twist like my innards are playing cat’s cradle with themselves. This would have been a lot easier if I had faced this like an adult from the very first serious conversation I was offered six days ago, instead of laughing it off and insisting we needed more wine—the special vintage from the cellar which requires me to leave the table,  _ apologies. _

Blue eyes peer through the gap, I can't see the effervescent hue, just the natural light from the night sky shimmering there, my own private stars. 

“Did I wake you?” his voice is low and deep and I frown at the goosebumps that trail my skin when the vibrations reach me. He knows I wasn't asleep because I can feel his grin. 

“Yes.” I don't want to start the discussion of why I was awake at whatever godforsaken time this is. I realise perhaps too late that lying about it makes it even more novel to him, that I feel the necessity to hide my restlessness because it is a direct symptom of sleeping close to him. But still not close enough to bring relief. 

“Do you want me to go?” it's a courteous enough sentence, or rather it would be if I couldn't taste the humour on his words as he sees through me. I sigh and grumble something about the hour and about the heat and about the cheese I ate before bed as I roll to my side and flick the switch on my side lamp.  _ Cheese _ ? What does anything have to do with cheese? 

An amber glow fills the room, not quite bright enough to stun me after laying so long in the dark, staring at the ceiling.The first thing my eyes search out is the clock on the masterpiece. It's almost 3am.

“You're here,” I'm trying to sound nonplussed about the fact his foot is in my room for the first time but my heart is beating that jagged and flaring heat through me; sharp and exhilarating. “And I'm awake now so you may as well stay.” I pause, not quite sure what he intended past knocking on the door with his pussyfooting around me. What do I do? “Is something wrong?” 

“No, I just couldn't sleep. I thought you might be awake.” 

“Why would you think that?” It dawns on me that I kicked my sheets off and I was only sleeping in shorts in the first place. I look like a concubine awaiting their master. I grab at the covers to hastily cover my torso. He doesn't say anything but I can feel his cheeks aching to laugh as if they are my own. Not  _ at _ me but at my confounding actions and words. 

“There was a thumping noise. Every night I hear it. I thought it might be you.” 

“Oh.” and what more is there to say. My code was received and my face is heating at my actions being understood, on top of the lie I feel like a fool. “Sometimes I do that.”

“ _ Sometimes _ .” He repeats and now I  _ can _ hear a softly smothered snicker. 

“Well, if you're going to make fun of me-” I begin defensively, feeling all too vulnerable. I should have gone to his room. I should be the one on my feet. My words falter when he presents a pale palm.

“I'm not. Can I?” his hand drops to gesture the room and I nod, nervously anticipating what comes next. With every step into the room he takes, I shuffle closer to the wall.

“You can sit.” I say to put an end to his foot shifting and his roaming eyes, trying to decide on where to make himself comfortable. To be honest I haven't made this space a place for entertaining. There's a wooden desk chair that I'm sure doesn't look at all inviting and my guess is that Oliver wants to feel comfortable for whatever conversation he hopes is sparked at 3am. Sighing, I lay my hand on the mattress. “On the bed if you want.” And he was waiting for just that because as soon as it was spoken he plants himself down, the surface dips with his weight. I've left the blankets across the space between us, a subtle reminder of the last time he decided to lay in bed with me. On top of the sheets. 

“I like your room.” He is wearing a white t shirt and dark shorts and I blink my eyes away from their not so subtle study of his back as he shoots a look over his shoulder at me.

“I never really bothered to make it homely. Just what I need when I'm here.” 

“Just what you need.” he murmurs, he's examining the space between us with an expression between puzzlement and amusement. His hand begins to travel the divide, casually ironing flat the creases in the material but I'm staring at his advancing limb like it's a viper. “It wasn't a criticism.” he adds, my words filter through whatever thoughts are primary in his mind. 

“I know.” 

“Still on the defensive?” and I snort at the comment. Of course I am, why would that change? Especially now. 

“No,” he grunts a laugh at my denial, “it's just bare; not all that welcoming.”

“Oh, I'm not sure about that.” he leans back on his palms for all the world on the edge of the pool, basking in the midday sun. How is he so relaxed? Always so comfortable in his own skin. But I'm not sure what he means, the most enticing thing in the room is the Persian rug. My papers and work litter the desk in a perfectly organised chaos and a towel dangles from the wardrobe door. Aside from that the decor and framed prints and photos are the same ones that hung on the walls before I moved to the larger suite. I thought about changing them but the faded wallpaper that contrasted against the protected section under the frames was enough of a deterrent for me to put the task off. I've had enough of painfully obvious and vacant holes in my life. I should have made this my space, I should have put down roots. Why didn't I? I'm a lodger in my own home. 

Oliver's eyes come to rest on my face to derail my spiralling thoughts and drive home his meaning:  _ I _ make the space welcoming. 

“Oh.” I'm starting to become frustrated with my lack of eloquence but I don't know what to say. I don't know how to start this. Instead, I nestle deeper into the pillow and divert my eyes to the bedside cabinet, studying the half glass of water there with a fierce intensity. My jaw feels cemented shut. I can feel him thinking and after a moment he moves up the mattress and lays down next to me, his face is now in my eyeline and he is grinning. Of course he's grinning. 

“You grew more stubborn in your old age.” he's whispering and so close I can taste his breath as though his lips were on mine. My palms are sweating and I realise the linens are tightly gripped in my fists. I empty my lungs, remembering to breathe and with the air comes a derisive snort. 

“I am not.” and my defensive tone couldn't prove him more right. “I'm just… this wasn't expected.”

“Me?”

“Yes,  _ you _ .” 

“Am I such a terrible guest?” 

_ Guest _ ? Is that what he is? I can't handle the directness of his gaze so I roll onto my back and try to find the swirling pattern in the ceiling plaster as interesting as it had been twenty minutes ago. His eyes are burning into my skull. “ _ Am I such a terrible guest?” _ I repeat and he's laughing now, trying to curl closer to me. I snort again before I speak. “You spend a week here and you seem more at home than I am.  _ Guest. _ ” and then I realise that's a part of my agitation: his belonging here seems more authentic than my own. He speaks easily to my mother and the guests, he remembers every step in our walks, every detail of our memories here seems to be clearer to him. He's settled as if he is inherent and yet I never was. How long is he going to take advantage of that ability this time? Ok, I admit it, I'm jealous but that's not new when it comes to us. 

“Ok, not guest. Part of the  _ familia _ .” 

“Familia.” I murmur. What does that even mean? Which etymology is he referring to? My mind hurdles over the varying uses and meanings of the word and the implications of that one sound, one so easy to say. 

His eyes begin to peel back my defenses, the emotion that lies deep is being coaxed to the surface. I can feel it in my stomach and my throat. It was always here, laying dormant. I never cut it out, it lived with me and was buried under the occupational layers of time and life. But it’s all there and well preserved. I can’t take the edge of this blade that wants to cut through my core anymore because at any moment I feel like my emotions can take several violent tangents: anger, sorrow, joy. “ _ Familia.”  _ I mutter again through gritted teeth as I turn on my side, face to the wall. I don’t know if I am ready for whatever lies beyond this point.

The move was a mistake and I realise that a little too late. Instead of shutting him out to delay the onslaught of my own reactions, I have offered him my most vulnerable side, the side that—if asked again—I would trust him with. I am caught between a rock and a hard place. The image of my mother quirking her eyebrow at the suggestion springs to mind. I’m sure this would amuse her. 

I can feel his warmth against my body and an instinct in me could count down the handful of seconds it takes before he pulls flush to my own form. My eyes squeeze shut as his arm lays heavy around my waist, tugging me with care into the curve of his body—his body that always seemed to fit so effortlessly to my own. And now I feel ridiculous because I want to push against his force— _ fight it _ —but at the same time I don't want him to stop. Like he promised. 

“You want to spend forever in the unknown?” the warmth of his words stirs the hair at the nape of my neck and I can’t escape the shudder that ripples through me. 

“If I don’t know then I can’t be disappointed.” and somehow I find words but I bring myself up short, my feet have clattered down the gangplank only to skid to a halt at the end, fearing the plunge beyond. 

“But you can worry about the disappointment that may or may not arise?” and I hum in agreement. But it also means that I can console my imagined loss with the hopes and fantasies that it might not be lost at all, that I might get to keep this, that my twenty year vigil is not in vain. I’m in limbo between several possible lives and right now I  _ want  _ to be unsure because I am scared of knowing and those other existences no longer being viable. But I’m tired— _ so tired _ —of feelings swarming in my gut like a burst of butterflies; fear, pain, love, happiness, all mingling together. Something has to give. 

“I can worry about a lot of things.” It’s vague but it's obvious by now that I’m finding it difficult to be direct. Like always. 

“You want that?”

“I’m not sure I’ve known anything else.” and I feel his grip tighten around me; a reflex of guilt. But I don’t want his guilt like I never wanted the shame. It was and is too pure to be needlessly sullied by those pollutants. 

There’s a silence now as he figures out what to say and I try to keep a tight leash on my self pity. I have been castaway so long I’ve forgotten how to set an anchor down or board an island or even recognise land— _ if _ I even knew how to do those things in the first place. But I am well versed in my own lonely poetry that I scrawl endlessly into the wood of my vessel. He had dry land under his feet, what made him cast off? What brought him here? And now I’m returned to my need to  _ know _ but my rib cage clamps down on the burning questions. One has made its way past bone and cartilage to the tip of my tongue, dangling in the air, when Oliver begins.

“ _ I  _ don't want you to live like that.” 

_ Well if you don't want that, Oliver, then it must be so _ , I scowl and for the benefit of the wall alone.

“What if I do?” It's a preposterous notion but it's the principle that’s my point.

“You don't.”

“ _ I don't?”  _ and now he has the nerve to tell me what I want and do not want, like he knows me. My lips draw into a tight line as I concede—to myself at least—that he does know me. Better than anyone ever has. Or will.

_ “ _ No. You don't. Nobody wants to live like that. You're just used to it.” 

“And you're suggesting that I get  _ un-used _ to it?” he hums approval at the notion and his mouth is so close to my neck I feel phantom kisses laced along my throat. I open my eyes to the wall, inches from my face to find I'm staring at an old drilled hole in the plaster, for some furnishing or frame belonging to a past generation. The aged wallpaper is frayed around the edges.  _ Vacant holes. _ My resolve hardens at the reminder and he can feel my body stiffen again. 

“You're so tense.” There's a tease in his voice and I panic at what I assume he intends next. 

“ _ Don't you dare _ .” I'm far from in the mood to have his thumbs slipping around the knots that I have grown used to. Or scared of what they will manage to loosen. It would be all too easy for him to undo the sinew that threads me together. 

He's laughing softly at the vehemence in my order as his fingers release their hold on me and the strings of my heart tighten.“My massage skills might have improved.” I turn swiftly to face him before he can begin to work his fingertips under the sheet that is the last divide between us. I'm frowning at him, my jaw is set and he's still smiling, pleased that I’ve given him ground by turning to him. It was a win-win for Oliver. Yet, as I stare back at him his expression turns earnest and sincere as he studies my face. I can feel the roughness around the edges being smoothed by the quiet between us in the few inches of no man's land. 

“I'm sorry.” he's whispering again. I want to ask for what: his comfortable hands or for the last twenty years? It seems like an all encompassing apology and one that I don't want. 

“You don't need to be.” 

“And yet I am.” 

I shrug at his words, “Well, you shouldn't.” 

Oliver stares at me for a long moment, I feel like he's weighing and measuring my defiance. “You need to speak your mind to me.” His hand moves towards me and I surprise myself by not flinching away. Hair is stroked behind my ear and then his fingers linger there before he takes them back. My skin feels on fire where he’s touched me.

“I don't know what you mean.” It's astonishing how easy the lies keep appearing in my mouth. But it's so easy to want to avoid the constant buzz of internal conflict when the heat of his touch is spreading through me like wildfire, my traitorous body so readily responding to his fingerprints. It would irritate me but I can see the same raging desire reflected in his eyes. He inches closer to me until the tip of his nose is almost touching my own and the sigh he lets out is one of complete contentment. I'd probably make the same sound but I've forgotten how to breathe. The tips of his fingers begin to make a slow dance down my arm as my fists continue to bunch cotton in a vice and clasp it to my chest like a shield.

“Yes, you do.” 

I try to swallow but my mouth is dry. There is no place to hide, not from him. “I don’t know where to start.” Honesty. It wasn’t that hard after all.

“Well,  _ that’s _ a start.”

I continue to stare at him silently because that’s no start at all, except for admitting that there indeed  _ must _ be one. But I’m sitting amongst coils of tangled rigging and I can’t tell him what the length of it is or where it is supposed to go because I can’t find the ends.  _ The start _ . I can't find the beginning. But I am sure there is enough for me to hang myself with. 

He feels my frantic thoughts and a palm sweeps up my spine, following the waves of my vertebrae and now I’m wishing the cotton wasn't between us. Everything softens and—as a cool breeze drifts through the open window—I sigh into him.. 

“I can help you.” he says before tipping his chin up and resting his lips on my forehead. Closing my eyes I wait for what he is going to say, what life line he can throw me as I'm neck deep in  _ everything  _ and have successfully managed to tie myself in knots. But all he is doing is breathing me in, just as I am filling my lungs with him. 

My fingers begin to loosen their grip as his hand settles on my nape, idly playing with the tips of my curls. Just as I am coming to peace with his body against mine and I start to consider simply falling asleep like this—despite the awkwardness that would resume in the morning—his chest stirs and his lips move from my skin. “I shouldn't have come.” His lips brush against me in a tender and loving contradiction to his words. 

Hands unravel and his warmth pulls away, and I let the rigging slip through my fingers. The weight lifts from the mattress and the floorboards now creak in reverse to play out his hesitant withdrawal from my space. The door gently pulls shut as I’m left speechless and alone in a deathly still room. 

The silent agony is shattered by my thoughts and emotions that rage anew, the tender scar tissue suddenly ripped wide open where I braved to show it.  _ He shouldn't have come? Tonight or at all? What did that even mean? _ I daren't move for the fear I will explode and my breath is haggard and heavy as I strain to control myself. I close my eyes tight and I'm imagining my procession to his room again. I can see it so clearly and this time it's not a timid creep. War drums sound as I approach that door and even the painted figures of antiquity avert their eyes from the untempered fury that boils beneath my skin. 

It's not until I feel wood under my palm and the harsh snap of a door clattering against the wall in the otherwise silent household that I realise I didn't imagine it. There were no drum peels but my own feet thundering towards Oliver's room. There’s dry ground underfoot and I'm thrown off by my subconscious  _ awake _ walking. 

But I only hesitate a second, he’d been at the balcony smoking and he's now shooting me a smile over his shoulder. Even my current state of undress doesn’t dissuade me of my reckoning. Planting my feet firmly inside the room I open my mouth to speak and the words come abnormally easily.  _ Too  _ easy.

“You have no right.” my voice is clinging to my last thread of self control. “You can't just come into my room, get behind my defences and leave. What did that even mean?  _ I shouldn't have come?”  _ and I do that childish voice in my fresh and petulant ire, his hand is by his mouth.  _ Is he covering his laughter? _ “At all? You regret coming, don't you? I should have known. Not what you expected. Too… too…  _ absurd  _ if it's allowed? Which I don't even know if this is:  _ Allowed _ . What are you doing here? What do you want?” All control is gone now and my voice is high and impassioned, everything is flooding from me at once and the torrent has left me breathless. 

Oliver moves to a seat by the window and looks almost unperturbed by my assumptions. His silence only fuels my anger.

“Did everything disappear and you thought  _ I know an idiot that's got nothing to lose— _ Or give? I don't have anything for you to take, Oliver. Were you so scared of the loneliness you thought I'd be a better option than solitude?  _ Well _ ?” and with every word a new blow lands on him and I begin to see the cracks in his stoic facade. He expected this and now—as I stand here and let myself observe—I realise he coaxed this. This was Oliver’s way of helping. He knew this would come and yet accepted it, I can see the pain my words inflict and he’s absorbing it like it’s his due. I know it's not fair, I know these are assumptions but I left it too long and the pressure is realised in one scalding stream. But he knew this had to be resolved, he tried adult conversation and gentle intimacy, this was the last option. And don’t I feel like the child again.

“You know that's not how it is.” he offers softly but it's not good enough. 

“No, Oliver, I don't know how it is.  _ That's  _ the problem. I accepted it when you left, I wished you well, I came to see you and respected your family. After all that and I still didn't feel anger at you. But this…  _ now.  _ Now I'm angry. You're back so  _ why _ ? Why now? And for how long?” and I do stop myself, the biting words that want to explode from my mouth will wound us both because I fear he will see through this, that it won't be what he remembered and I will disappoint him. This was all an ill remembered dream that will leave a sour taste in his mouth. What if it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy if I speak it?

“It's not lost on me,” he leans forward now as I catch my breath, his elbows on his knees and resting his chin in his palm. “The things I know  _ you've _ lost because of us. Or never had. I know it and it hurts, endlessly.” he stops to scrub at his eyes. He's still cradling his face in his hands when he continues, his voice unsteady. “I've been dying without you, Elio.” 

I shift from one foot to the other and my mouth is left open. My plethora of words and accusations have dried up in the intensity of Oliver’s candor. I'm shocked and not only at the vulnerability presented, this being the second time I’ve seen him like this in a week and these are the only two occasions I've  _ ever  _ witnessed it in him at all; It contradicts everything I tell myself about what he is in my internal fury. But I'm also taken back by the directness of his words and the absolute truth behind them. 

_ We've been dying without each other. _

I have to put my palm to the wall for strength because quite frankly I need it. “What happened?” my words are pained in the wake of my anger and his honesty. And I don't need to elaborate, it's the question he's been waiting to hear and the one that burned the hottest. Perhaps it isn't my business but I need to know. 

I realise I've made my way to the dresser and I perch on the edge. It's the first time I've been in here since he's been back and it already looks like his space again. Different from before but his nonetheless. He has his own work out on the desk: books and loose sheets, his laptop is open but the screen is black. It's neater than before, the towel he used for his evening shower was hung to dry in the cooling heat of the day and now lies folded next to me on the wooden surface. He's been domesticated. I want to grin but I’m thrown off by the battered copy of  _ La Vita Nuova  _ on his bedside table: Dante’s idyllic prose and poetry centered around a figure he met only twice. So we’ve moved on from the journey through Hell and Purgatory and I’ve guided him to heaven—Oliver’s very own Beatrice.

His sigh pulls me from my egotistical thoughts and I focus on him. “It had been disintegrating for a while and it finally fell apart after the boys left for college. We didn't fit neatly together anymore, like we were expected to. Being a father was an easy way to cover up the inconvenient truths. They took priority. When they were gone and it was just her and I...” He sits back and crosses his arms, looking at something unseen in the patterned wallpaper. “And I always knew... it always  _ felt  _ different. A different way.  _ You _ were always the truth of me. Of my heart. I told you that.”

I have to resist the pull towards the sweetness of his words, he did say that and I know it to be true despite the storms of doubt. “But you could live with it before, what changed?” But something  _ must  _ have changed, that he now had to come back. Was it after things disintegrated—as he put it—or before? I ask myself how much that really matters.

“Everything and nothing at all.” 

I frown at his words before it starts to make sense. The years have changed, lengthened and evolved. Priorities, expectations and the very world itself is a different place. And yet what is between us never altered, it’s the one solid factor that runs through the turbulent landscape of life. 

I had noticed the subtleties: there seems to be no rudimentary phone call home, his lack of wedding band marks it's own vacant space, even as I stand here now I see his things have been packed away or hung and his empty case is slung to the back of the dusty reaches on top of the wardrobe. He's settling and my heart flutters. I had played those small morsels of information off as something innocent: perhaps his family are on holiday, perhaps he lost his ring, perhaps he just prefers things neat and tidy. The evidence is mounting that this isn't just an impulsive flight of fancy, this is somewhat permanent and to some degree premeditated. My imagination  _ isn't _ trying to run away with me. 

“I'm sorry.” Even I'm confused by my apology. But I  _ am  _ sorry, I always imagine him so sure and strong in his purposeful life. Maybe he could have had a happily  _ regular  _ life if we hadn't met. How much is he losing being here? What are the risks? I never wanted him to pay for what transpired between us and I can't help but feel culpable for this upheaval. 

He's staring at me now and I shake my head. I'm less sure of my emotions now than I have been all week. They flare and dance like sun spots on my heart. And now his blue eyes are on me, I feel that urge to rescue something. Rescue  _ him _ . The way I'd cleared the grit from his hands and thrown his sandals into the bushes last week. Did he know that was my way of saying he belongs here now? That he  _ should  _ belong here. Does that make me selfish? 

“ _ You  _ of all people have nothing to be sorry about.”

“And yet I am.” he smiles softly as I use his own words against him. A stillness settles between us, comfortable in each other's company but anxious at the hurdles still to cross. I clear my throat, gathering myself to plow on forward. “And do you have a plan? How long can you stay?” his smile doesn't falter he merely shrugs.

“I had no plan. I  _ think  _ I must have known why I was coming. It's the first time I've set out unsure since…” his eyes scan the room as he calculates, “well, since I left you.” I nod slowly as he speaks. Oliver doesn't even have an idea of what happens next? I assumed he held all the cards and knew the hands being dealt. “I'm on sabbatical, they are fairly flexible with whatever it is I decide to do next. Come back or not, work from afar in a new role.” He makes a gesture with his hands as though to say it's an open book and the pages are blank from this point. “In fact it was encouraged that I take some time, I haven’t been myself and it was starting to show. I took it as the sign it was, the signs that keep pointing back to you.” I try to stop myself from drowning in the possibilities that rush me. I need to focus on the bullet points, the rest will arrange itself. I hope.

“And your expectations?” He looks at me now and he knows what I mean. “Of me.” I clarify to push him to the specifics that I desperately need now that I’ve started.

“I have no expectations. It's why there's no plan, I can't assume that you'll want anything to do with me past a fleeting moment every handful of years— _ If that _ .” 

I'm not sure if this is the bit where I'm supposed to open up and say what I want or don't want from him. It's a foreign position that I find myself in, that I get to make a decision so defining. I can take the helm and steer us to whatever destination that I want. It's monumental and I can't bring myself to say anything: confirm or deny. I'm frozen by the magnitude of it all, the very fact my words will alter the course of his life.  _ Our lives _ . 

His face falls when I hold back and a sadness that I've never seen before settles around his eyes. He’s taken my silence as refusal. I want to reach out to him and smooth the pain away, with my fingers and words and yet I still can't move any part of me.

He pushes himself up from his chair and scrubs a hand through his hair, letting out a defeated sigh as he does so. “You don't need to say anything, Elio.” he paces for a moment and all I can do is watch with my heart in my throat. “I've already asked too much of you without the decency of speaking it. Too much for too long.” he shakes his head and I can feel his frustration at himself mounting. “Maybe I left it too long. Maybe it's not the same for you anymore. Maybe I'm a ghost you don't want haunting you. I have to accept that.” He looks around the room again, not quite sure where to put himself. The anguish is so sharp as I study him visualise everything falling to wreck and ruin in his mind's eye.

His hand extends to the desk and he slides a cigarette from the packet that’s sat there. He brandishes it in the air and then nods towards the balcony. “I need a smoke.” I stay silent and  watch him push through the net curtain until I’m left staring at his filmy image as he rests his hands on the rail. 

Despite my blurred view of Oliver, I am starting to see him clearer than I ever had. He needed strength given to him, he’s struggled and has been treading water under the weight of us bearing down on his shoulders. He is probably better at compartmentalizing conflicting issues than I am, but he's not immune to what we share. As time has gone by it's needled its way into him further and further until it drove him here, to surrender and find emancipation. He needs me. The understanding reveals itself and I'm glad for the surface underneath my backside because my body threatens to give out all strength entirely.

_ He needs me as much as I need him.  _

And here I am, sat like a sack of sand that keeps forgetting to breathe. I feel more comfortable in this space—which has only  _ just  _ been reclaimed by Oliver—than I ever have in my own suite of many years.  _ He  _ is my home. 

Taking a deep breath, I push myself away from the dresser and make my way through to the balcony, pushing aside the silky divide with my palm. He looks back at me, his cigarette still between his fingers and unlit. 

I open my mouth but the words come to an abrupt halt as a generous and cold raindrop lands on my forehead. I tip my chin up to the sky and I'm blessed with more droplets kissing my flesh. The rain held off until I stood right here with him. The tension snapped and the heavens themselves are crying in relief; the world was holding its breath too. Within a heart beat the gentle kisses turn furious and water streaks down my chest in flood rivers. I run fingers through my slick hair as I drop my gaze to find Oliver, facing me and looking as soaked as I am. 

I can't stop the laughter that erupts from my chest and I don’t want to; sweet and beautiful alleviation. A sensation I never thought I’d be granted and didn’t know how much I needed. Pale blue and grey streak the sky to the west threatening the false dawn and a new day being baptised. 

“You didn't wait too long and it isn’t different for me, nothing's changed here.” and I don’t just mean within me, I mean the very ground we are on. “And I can't get away from your ghost even if I wanted to. It's all around me: the pool, your rock, the berm, right here.  _ Always _ .” he's grinning now and this time I mirror it. A couple of fools in love. Did we ever admit that? I don't think we needed to. 

That dangerous quiet settles over us and our chests begin to rise like the tide.  “I don’t think you’ll be able to smoke that now.” I say as my eyes flick down to his fingers still holding the cigarette which is almost broken in half with the rain water it’s absorbed. He doesn’t even look at his hand, the slender white stick falls to the ground as it’s forgotten and he takes a step towards me.

“I thought I'd killed it. Us.” Oliver blinks the rain from his eyes but otherwise he's completely unconcerned of the downpour or his soaked through clothes. The tracks of the rain down his cheeks look like tears and now I'm moving towards him because I can't bear the distance any longer. 

And it's like I've never been away or he never left. My arms wrap around him and pull him into my body. I'm here with Oliver and we are alive. The soaked material sticks to our skin, my hands run smoothly over his flesh and it feels softer than the net curtains against my palms. The rain embalms us and, as we cling to each other for dear life and I feel his heart pound against my chest. We’re being born again. The waters of the womb, the quickening thud of life anew, the clinging of the embryonic sac and his arms that contract around me, leaving me breathless. But I don't need air I just need him. 

“Mother will flay me with the rough side of her tongue if you catch a cold.” I'm murmuring into his neck. Just like last week, feeling his body beneath my lips is exhilarating. Everything I need to survive passes that barrier and I have been starved of this particular necessity too long. 

Despite my warning, long moments pass before we separate long enough to step back into the dry, making pools where we place our feet. He throws a towel at my head and our laughter is light in this quiet space as I begin to towel dry my hair and chest. I have to wonder if I gave up on smiling altogether the way my cheeks are beginning to ache but my thoughts are cast adrift entirely when I hear the sound of wet clothing being peeled from skin. Of course he would change his shirt, it’s soaked. It’s logical. And yet I can't translate that to my body, as eager to respond to the scenario as it was earlier. Memories cascade through my mind of our clothing falling to the floor, or thrown this way and that. It seems like yesterday. 

My hands slow their movements as I start to feel like I did in that  _ yesterday  _ or yesteryear or those moments that seem defined more accurately and beautifully than anything else I've ever known. Irrational nerves and anxiety run through me like currents. I shouldn’t be nervous or anxious, I know why he’s here and I know he intends to stay. The finer details will sort themselves out. And yet still I can’t look at his face and my own is flushed. It seems so shocking how quickly into normalcy we have fallen. Our own brand of normalcy that is. The love never died—I think I always knew that—but now I can see it as the ember that I carried in my tinder box. Now it needs to be coaxed to a flame. Oliver can feel it, his smirk is reflected off my bare skin and it’s as warm as the fire I’m imagining.

“Am I offending you?” His tone is incredulous but his choice of words pull a snort of laughter from me. That day on the berm, except the roles are reversed. 

“Maybe I should let you change. I need to get shorts.” There was the whole matter of sleep to attend to as well, although I can’t see that happening anytime soon whether I’m in my own bed or in his. It must already be past four becauseI can hear the sounds of early morning stirring from outside the open window, despite the rain still pummeling every available surface. 

I try to move towards the door but Oliver is at the foot of the bed, I can’t get out without passing him. Do I want to go? I already know the answer to that.

“You can borrow something.” he offers, not making a move to stop my gradual edging towards the exit and I realise I’m disappointed that he doesn’t. I take another step.

“It’s fine, it’s just down the-” and my words die as a deft touch brushes down my arm. It does more than any forceful hold could ever do. Everything freezes except my eyes that climb his chest to find his earnest eyes.

“Stay with me,  _ please _ ?” And now I realise. He’d never asked anything from me before, never to do this or do that or to stay. He never felt he had the right. But now I needed him to ask me to stay with him, to be in the right, and he has. His gentle breath is teasing that ember to a golden glow. 

And I’ve already begun the honesty so there’s no point in holding out now. “I don’t want to go. It’s old and new, remembered and forgotten. It’s  _ a lot _ . I’m just…”  _ Scared?  _ That was never there before when I ran headlong into him; this week I have done everything I could to hide from everything. But with age comes our mortality complex. I’d survived this coma and been revived, the thought of gaining and losing it again is incomprehensible. Irreparable. Unforgivable. And with all other barriers overcome, there's nothing left standing in the way of our skin. 

But he understands that with the calm patience that graces his features and the warm way his palm lays flat and tender on my arm. “I know. The footwork is all mine.” 

I nod. What else can I say? He has all the answers that I’ve wanted so desperately to hear. 

“I'll stay with you.” 

  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> If it feels like a cliff hanger that's cos it is.... I have the idea for what comes next *smirk* 
> 
> As always, comments, criticism and suggestions welcomed. If you enjoyed please leave a kudos or comment!!! I love hearing from you guys <3
> 
> NOTE (15/03/18) - I continue this on in the original fic [Cor Cordium](http://archiveofourown.org/works/13335540), so for the next chapter, click that link <3


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